Tuesday, Sept 8th, End of classes
Classroom 2-C
As it turned out, the swim classes offered for PE – mostly for lower schoolers and first-years – did not fit his class schedule at all, soccer aside. The department assistant said they’d get back to him. In the meanwhile, he’d been telling Jack and Kai about it.
“It doesn’t sound so bad,” said Jack. “We didn’t get a lot of new members. It shouldn’t hurt your place on the team if you are still serious about it.”
Joel shrugged.
“How about you, Mark? Kai was saying you checked out fencing with him.”
“I think I’m going to try it for PE credit,” I said. “Are you really sure Cory isn’t going have a problem with my being involved?”
Before Kai answered, Jack had a question. “How did you manage to get on her bad side this fast?”
Unlike the others, Jack wasn’t in physics, and Kai ended up explaining the situation in physics class. “…and no, Mark, she’s not going to make a big deal about it. I talked to her afterwards. We pretty much need all three of you who showed up to stick with it, we’re risking being short when the third years all graduate.”
“Is that because Gwen was the face of the third year, and Cory scared off the other folks in our year?”
“I wouldn’t let her hear you say it,” said Kai, “but …” and he let that trail off with a smirk.
“Oh, hey,” I said. “Do you know how we’d sign up for a festival booth?”
“Do you mean for the club? Gwen will be handling that,” said Kai.
“No, for a national booth,” I said. “I don’t think anyone else will be doing an American one, and the guy from our State Department was interested in sponsoring one.”
“I think either someone from the student council, or our volunteers from the festival committee would know.”
I remembered that some girls had volunteered for it but not who they were any longer. “Do you remember who our representatives were?”
Kai did and went to check with the one who was still in the classroom. She said she couldn’t help, but either Elise, who was the representative for the whole second year class, or someone else on student council could.
Elise was in our homeroom, and after Joel’s interest in her last week I remembered who she was. She was, however, nowhere to be seen. “Elise always leaves right after the day ends,” said Jack. “It was the same last year. I think she has a job on days she isn’t doing student council stuff.”
“Could you two help us find the student council room?” Joel asked.
“Sure,” said Jack.
“Since he’s got you covered, I’m going to head to my test prep class,” said Kai.
Kai went to get Amy, and the two departed together. While we walked over with Jack, I couldn’t resist asking, “Is there something going on with those two?”
“Joel asked me the same thing at soccer,” Jack said, “and like I said then, there isn’t. I’m pretty sure there should be, but whatever.” He shrugged.
The student council room was on the top floor of the arts center, where we’d had the opening ceremony; once we were there, I’d realized we’d seen it on our tour. It was unlocked, so we headed in. Two people were seated on opposite sides of a big conference table. Neil, who I remembered from our tour, appeared to be studying from one of the same textbooks we used. The other, Elise, from our homeroom, had a stack of papers in front of her and seemed intent on them.
“Can I help you?” asked Neil. Elise didn’t look up.
“Oh, hey Neil,” said Joel. “Can you help us register a booth for the festival?”
“The soccer team is already registered, and your classroom reps will handle it for that,” said Neil. When Joel didn’t respond, he went on, “So who are you trying to register it for?”
“The flyer said something about national and cultural booths,” said Joel. “We’re from America and wanted to register one.”
“Oh,” said Neil, looking over at me. “It’s just the two of you, right? We don’t usually register clubs for just two people.”
“The flyer made it sound like we didn’t need a full cultural club to have a booth at the festival.”
“That’s for students directly from another country recognized by the Union. A lot of students at this school have ancestors who were Americans among the newcomers.”
Joel shook his head. “Didn’t we tell you where we were from when you gave us the tour? We’re not locals, we’re visiting students from America, on the other side of the gate.”
Neil looked like he was stifling a laugh, or ready to vomit. It was kind of hard to tell. “Do you expect me to believe that somehow the Brotherhood broke secrecy in your world, just to let a couple of high school students through the gate?”
“Not just us. The main trade mission has a diplomat here from the U.S., and his security,” said Joel. “I’m pretty sure we were an afterthought.”
“Just stop. This isn’t funny, and you’re wasting my time. I could report this as an honor code violation.”
I butted in. “Go ahead and report it.”
“Are you daft or something?” asked Neil.
“C’mon, Mark,” said Joel. “This isn’t worth the trouble. Hull will understand.”
“No,” I said. “Report us. The dean’s office has all the paperwork and can confirm where we’re from.”
“Right,” said Neil. “Quit wasting my time, listen to your friend, and leave.”
“I’ll be back with proof.”
“Sure you will.”
Joel and I left. A safe distance away, I said to Joel, “What an asshole!”
“Keep it down,” said Joel.
“Why? Isn’t he also on the soccer team?”
“Yeah, one of the officers. I don’t want to get on his bad side this soon. Besides, would you believe us if you heard it?”
“Why does he even care? It’s just a booth.”
Interlude
The student council room
Elise had been trying to study and hadn’t wanted to get involved when Neil had clearly made up his mind about the two students. After they left, though, she was curious about his reasoning. While they’d been working together the past few weeks, she hadn’t known him the prior year and wasn’t sure what to make of him.
“What was the big deal with letting them have a booth?” she asked.
“They’re probably just doing it to get out of doing something with their classroom,” said Neil.
“So? We’ve always had national booths.”
“There were only two of them,” he said.
“At the last two year’s festivals we had one girl from Wu with her own booth,” said Elise.
“That’s a real place. Do you expect me to have believed their story?”
Elise shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“I do. They won’t be back.”
Elise was pretty sure there was more to it, but she hadn’t wanted to make a scene then, and had even less desire to get into more of an argument now. She decided to head out for the day and started packing up as she could finish studying at home.
“You shouldn’t go,” said Neil.
“I’ve got my job this evening,” said Elise. It was a lie, but everyone on student council knew that she worked a lot.
As she left, she heard Neil talking to himself; he must have thought she was out of earshot. “She isn’t nearly dedicated enough,” said Neil, and if anything followed, she was too far away to hear it.
